A former day-care owner's diary made public Friday by a Broward County judge contains 300 pages of detailed descriptions of nude children and fantasies of children engaging in sexual acts.
Broward Circuit Court Judge Robert W. Tyson ordered the release of the diary of John Shaver, 56, former owner of the Rainbow Learning Center who was charged in January with five counts of possessing child pornography and 24 counts of promoting sexual performance by a child.
In addition to the entries taken from seven spiral notebooks found in Shaver's Fort Lauderdale home, the court released a suicide note written by Shaver shortly before he cut his wrist during a suicide attempt in a hotel room in February.
Broward County police became suspicious of Shaver after a Hollywood photo lab reported receiving rolls of film for development that depicted nude children. A raid of Shaver's home led to the discovery of thousands of pictures of nude children and video tapes of porno movies spliced into Disney films.
Twenty children from the Rainbow center, which was closed following Shaver's arrest, were identified in the photographs.
In the two-page suicide note, Shaver wrote: ''' Porno Man' people call me. I am out of step with the world. ... So I saw the TV and they say 14 kids from Rainbow were photographed in the nude. No one at Rainbow was in the nude. What is this? Either I'm crazy or the world is. I've got to leave it.''
In the diaries, written in long-hand, Shaver describes the children he observed at a nudist camp in France and in the Dominican Republic and Haiti where he took vacations. None of the entries depicts Shaver involved in any sexual acts with the children. The diary does contain some of his fantasies of imaginary boys and girls engaged in sexual intercourse.
One excerpt describes the children who lived next door to him while he lived in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. It includes the following passage: ''Carol and Maria lived next door. They were 9 and 7 and quite pretty little girls. ... I remember one afternoon when I first moved here. Carol and Maria came past wearing their blue-and-gray checkered uniform skirts. They smiled and waved. ''Even at 9 she was curvy. She had twin pigtails, mysterious large brown eyes, a delicate feminine face ... a small waist, lovely flared hips, a very round pair of bubble buttocks that went way out and way in. Wow, I could stare at them all day.''
Shaver then describes how the girls left their homes clad only in their underwear, played with other children on the block and spanked each other.
Most of his descriptions were of children under 12 years of age. Interspersed in the narrative were notations on how many rolls of film he had taken of the children, apparently unobserved.
David Bogenschutz, Shaver's defense attorney, protested the release of the diary, saying it would have ''an explosive impact'' on his client's right to a fair trial by making it difficult to find an impartial jury in Broward County.
However, Bogenschutz did not file an emergency appeal to block the diary's release in the 24 hours after Tyson announced he would release the information.
'I find that closure is not necessary to prevent a threat to the administration of justice,'' Tyson said Thursday when he announced that the diary would be made available to the public.

One Porno Charge Remains Against Former Day-Care Center OwnerA circuit judge dropped all but one child pornography possession charge Tuesday against a former day-care center owner accused of having thousands of nude photographs of children in his home.
Citing a state appeals court ruling, Circuit Judge Robert Tyson dismissed 28 of the 29 counts of possession of child pornography facing John W. "Jack" Shaver, former owner of the Rainbow Learning Center.
Tyson dismissed the charges based upon a ruling June 13 by the 4th District Court of Appeals that a defendant could not be charged with multiple counts of possession of child pornography arising from a single transaction.
Prosecutors have 15 days to appeal Tyson's ruling.
''I argued that the facts of our case were distinguishable and the 4th DCA opinion was in error,'' Assistant State Attorney Brian Trehy, who is in charge of the Broward County prosecutors' battery and child abuse unit, said after a hearing. ''However, as an attorney, I also had to agree that Judge Tyson was bound by the 4th DCA's opinion.''
Defense lawyer David Bogenschutz, who asked the judge to dismiss the charges against Shaver, said Tyson's ruling affirmed what he and his client had been arguing since the case began in January.
''I feel like it was something that validated our original thoughts that this thing should be considered one count from one seizure in one place,'' Bogenschutz said.
Shaver, 56, had entered innocent pleas on all 29 counts. He was placed for a short time at a state mental hospital after a failed suicide attempt but is free on $70,000 bond.
The child pornography possession charges stemmed from the seizure in January of about 2,000 photographs of nude children from the home of Shaver, who acknowledged having the photographs but denied any wrongdoing.
None of the nude photographs included children who attended the defunct day-care center, Bogenschutz said, and an investigation concluded that no Rainbow Learning- Center students had been molested by Shaver.
The center owner had said the photographs were 20-years-old, taken during a time when having nude photos of children was acceptable. Bogenschutz said some of the photos were taken at a nudist camp and others were commercially produced.
The case against Shaver has come to one of a ''guy who has some pictures the state doesn't believe he should have,'' Bogenschutz said. ''This guy has been from pillar to post on a hot issue.''